I can see clearly now...

For the past week or so, the air quality here has been horrible due to the Oregon wildfires blowing up our way. Our air quality index was in the 150-200+ range for the better part of a week! It bummed us out because we had to cancel our camping trip to Deception Pass that we had booked back in January.

While we stayed in, we found ways to amuse ourselves including FINALLY getting the girls to watch the Star Wars trilogy. I think they were so desperate for screen time they finally relented to Scott's badgering them to watch it. They ended up enjoying it quite a bit and have already been asking us about watching the other episodes. YAY for the small wins during these crazy times, right?

Hazy hazy view of our street

This is the view of downtown Bellevue getting off the 405 exit. This isn't even a mile from downtown!

Scott passed time by brewing beer in our kitchen. This is the disaster that was our kitchen one night.

He had so much weight and water in the sink that it started to leak...

Drying out hops so that he can brew more later.

Finally painting the rocks we got form Seabrook.

Evie's Princess Leia hairdo.

The weather FINALLY cleared up on Sunday after a few days of rain and boy were we happy to head out to the park to breathe in the nice clean air! Here's a few glamour shots I tried to take of the girls. They weren't being very cooperative but some turned out okay!

Her annoyed-at-Mom-for-taking-so-many pictures face

I think she looks like Scott's old baby photos here

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Family time

I had to do a quick trip to LA towards the end of July to say goodbye to my Uncle Pang, who passed away a few weeks earlier. I have fond memories of fun cousin time at his house in Palos Verdes and Uncle Pang taking us to the beach when we were younger. I remember how he delighted in making us kids squeal with laughter by pretending the car ride was a rolleroaster - we'd take sharp turns and all of us kids would slide to one side of his Volvo station wagon or he'd slow the car down to a roll and we'd all chant that we couldn't let the car stop and it would inch slowly forward at a stoplight. Although it was a sad reason to get together, I think he would be happy to know that the weekend was also a wonderful get together with family. Because it was fairly last minute, none of the kids flew over which meant us "adult cousins" were able to have long talks and linger over food. Kin and Meredith were able to host a summertime bbq at their house and we had a nice t

Japan trip

We got back from Japan about a week ago and we're still talking about what a great trip it was! Japan has never been super high on my places to visit but for a lot of reasons (I've never been, it's clean, it's safe, it's different) we took the plunge and booked it as our summer vacation this year. It helped that our friends, the Wongs, went last year, raved about it and loved it so much they were going again and we were able to coordinate so that some of our trip overlapped with theirs. It helped even more that the yen is at a 10-year low (maybe all time low?) against the dollar, which, aside from airfare, made everything quite affordable. Look how low the yen is! We lucked out that it kept falling after we booked our tix in Dec. Since this was our first big overseas trip since COVID and with kids (or, lets face it, SINCE kids), I dove into prepping for our trip - including trying to keep up my Duolingo streak of learning Japanese for at least a few minutes everyd

Miss Evie becomes a teenager

EEEK! We officially have a teenager in our house! I can't believe our little Evie is now 13 years old. I can still see her as a little girl saying "Swiper no swiping!" For her birthday this year, she and a few of the neighborhood girls went to get their nails done at the salon nearby. She doesn't remember the last time she got her nails professionally done ( back in 2016! ) so she was pretty excited about it. She picked a very pretty teal color. Afterwards, the girls had some cake. To celebrate her actual birthday, her ask was for tv time, shopping and sushi. So after a morning spent hanging out in from the tv, we headed to Bellevue Square mall where guess what? She got a phone! Technically, I got a new phone and handed down my old phone to her. We spent a good 3 hours doing all the transfers but she was very patient about it and grinning from ear to ear when we went to dinner that night. At 13, Evie has become a very stereotypical teenage girl - she loves clothes

Simpsons in Seattle

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